


Amends

by Scytale



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, 3 Sentence Fiction, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/pseuds/Scytale
Summary: Hades and Persephone, and maybe the beginning of a reconciliation.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Amends

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Making Amends" at the 3 Sentence Ficathon: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/157880.html

When fall comes, Persephone opens up her speakeasy again, down at the edge of town where Hades's guards don't go.  
  
Hades's workers find her, the way they always do. They line up in her bar, and she pours them gin and moonshine. She tells them stories, tales of the world above and of the time -- not so long ago -- that a singer came down to defy the king of the dead -- and fall turns to winter. She and the workers raise their cups to Orpheus; they try to forget and they try to remember.  
  
Back in her husband's palace, she and Hades circle each other like wary cats. They aren't fighting, and that's a mercy, but they aren't talking either. And anyway, he's busy building his new foundry. Maybe things would have been different if Orpheus hadn't looked back, but he did, and she figures this uneasy armistice between her and Hades is as good as it'll ever get.  
  
She's mixing drinks one day when the bar suddenly falls silent around her. When she looks up, she sees Hades at the door, every worker in the bar looking away, trying to avoid his attention.  
  
Hades ignores them all. He steps up to the counter, his footsteps loud against the floorboards, his expression stony, his eyes fixed on her.  
  
Persephone already knows how this story will go. He'll board up her bar and she'll spit fury at him, and they'll go on hurting each other until spring sets them both free.  
  
But he doesn't say anything. The look that flashes across his face looks like weariness, looks like despair — and like something else entirely that she can’t quite place.  
  
Hades takes his hat into his hand. "Is there room for one more?" he asks.  
  
His voice is low and intimate, meant only for her, in spite of everyone else around them. And for a moment, it seems like it’s just the two of them in here, the same way it was when the world was young. Him asking, waiting for her answer, giving her his heart to hold.  
  
But he’s a king now. If she says no, if she denies him in front of them, she can ruin him.  
  
The silence stretches between the two of them. At last, she breaks it.  
  
"There's room for everybody here," she says.  
  
She sets a glass in front of him on the counter, and she pours him a drink.


End file.
